Those who are pushing the proposed $1.4 billion Northern Pass project to import Canadian hydropower through New Hampshire’s North Country – to be fed into the New England power grid – tout it as a solution to many of the region’s future energy needs. Importing 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower, according to the project’s backers, is the answer to the rising cost of natural gas, the closing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant, the pollution caused by coal- and oil-burning plants, and many other challenges that may loom on the New England energy horizon.

They claim it will create jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue for the New Hampshire towns that the high-voltage tranmission lines would pass through.

We don’t doubt that many of those claims are true.

Gary Long, the former Public Service Company of New Hampshire CEO who is now spearheading the Northern Pass project, also claimed in a recent editorial board meeting at The Telegraph that most people in the North Country are actually in favor of the project. They’re just afraid to say so publicly, Long argued, because of what their neighbors might think.

We think Mr. Long is wrong in that regard. Northern Pass does, in fact, have some support in the North Country, but at meetings held to discuss the project, opponents have consistently outnumbered supporters by large margins. We rather doubt that’s because project supporters are hiding in the woods.

Even if nobody supported it, public opposition alone shouldn’t be enough to kill the project. But in a state where “local control” might be a motto second only to “Live Free or Die,” the concerns of the people in the communities that will host the power lines ought to be given full weight by federal and state regulators.

Chief among those concerns is that building 1,100 towers to carry 180 miles of high-voltage transmission line through from Canada through New Hampshire would be a scar on the landscape and carry an adverse environmental impact.

Northern Pass officials dismiss those objections as rooted in a not-in-my-backyard mindset pervasive among the project’s opponents.

There may be some of that, but given the millions of visitors who come to the state each year – many of whom are attracted, at least in part, by its sweeping, unspoiled mountain vistas – visual impact is not a small point. Some of those visitors bring money with them, too.

Those who say Northern Pass can do better than to bury only eight miles of line have long had a cause, and now they may have a case. Another utility announced plans last week to import power from Canada through Vermont – and to bury more than 100 miles of that line.

Northern Pass officials say the nascent Vermont project and theirs aren’t at all comparable, for several reasons. Even if that’s true, the announcement of the new project still weakens the perception that the Northern Pass plan is the only way.

By insisting that no more of the line can be buried, that they couldn’t possibly consider alternative routes and that theirs is the only viable way, they appear to be issuing the state an ultimatum. Oddly, they made some of the same arguments when the project was first announced – and then amended the plan in response to the feedback they received.

They deserve credit for that, but this is hardly the time to draw lines in the sand.

The state’s political leaders seem united in their view that more of the line should be buried, even as nobody disputes that the region could use the additional energy.

But if this is the best Northern Pass can do, maybe the region should just take a pass on the project.

Frankly, though, we’d rather Northern Pass officials came up with a plan that could win the support of the people who will have to live with it.

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